The present technology relates to an electrophoresis device including migrating particles in an insulating liquid, a display unit using the electrophoresis device, and an electronic apparatus including the display unit.
In recent years, demand for display units (displays) with low power consumption and high image quality have been growing with the widespread use of mobile devices such as cellular phones or personal digital assistants. In particular, the recent launch of electronic book distribution service causes demand for displays with display quality suitable for reading use.
As such displays, there have been proposed various kinds of displays including cholesteric liquid crystal displays, electrophoretic displays, electrical oxidation-reduction displays, and twisting ball displays; however, reflective displays are advantageous for reading use. As with paper, in the reflective displays, display in a bright state is performed with use of reflection (scattering) of outside light; therefore, display quality closer to that of paper is allowed to be obtained.
In the reflective displays, electrophoretic displays using an electrophoretic phenomenon have low power consumption and high response speed; therefore, the electrophoretic displays are considered as potential candidates. As displaying methods by the electrophoretic displays, the following two methods have been mainly proposed.
As a first method, two kinds of charged particles are dispersed in an insulating liquid to be moved by an electric field. These two kinds of charged particles have different optical reflection properties from each other, and are opposite in polarity to each other. In this method, an image is displayed by changing a distribution state of the charged particles according to an electric field.
As a second method, while charged particles are dispersed in an insulating liquid, a porous layer is provided (for example, refer to PTL 1). In this method, the charged particles move through pores of the porous layer according to an electric field. For example, a polymer film may be used as the porous layer.